Sound, scent, sight, light, and movement. Step Inside features four immersive installations by Anicka Yi, Philippe Parreno, Laure Prouvost, and Pamela Rosenkranz. The exhibition examines how contemporary art engages the body, heightens sensory awareness, and creates spaces for experience and critical reflection.
”Immersive art is at the heart of ARoS’ identity. With Step Inside, we aim to demonstrate how contemporary art harnesses the senses to generate insight and spark meaningful conversations about the world we share,” says museum director Rebecca Matthews.
Step Inside addresses current themes such as climate, migration, ecofeminism, biotechnology, and the relationship between humans and machines.
”The exhibition investigates how art can activate the senses in ways that sharpen our awareness of technology, biology, and culture,” says curator Victoria Christiansen, adding:
”The four works demonstrate how materials such as scent, sound, and light can generate insights that emerge in the encounter between body and environment.”
Four artists, four approaches
Anicka Yi – scent as artistic material
Through a multisensory practice, Anicka Yi (b. 1971, South Korea) has radically expanded what an artwork can be, transforming exhibition into bodily experiences. In Step Inside, Yi presents the first part of her extensive project Emptiness: a video work exploring whether an artist’s practice can be continued by AI after the artist’s death.
Scent plays a central role in Yi’s art – not merely as decoration or atmosphere, but as a critical, sensory, and philosophical tool to challenge how we percieve and understand the world.
This is Yi’s first presentation at a Danish museum.
Philippe Parreno – choreographed objects in constant transformation
Philippe Parreno (b. 1964, France) creates installations where sound, light, mechanical and digital elements form a spatial choreography. An algorithm-controlled piano and floating helium fish feature in Parreno’s work, which changes form throughout the day and across the exhibition period.
Quasi Objects functions as a responsive environment where objects and technologies behave like living organisms. The work is on loan from the Pinault Collection, Paris.
Laure Prouvost – a poetic world of textiles, objects, and sound
Laure Prouvost (b. 1978, France) presents an installation where woven textiles, video, sound, and found objects merge into a sensory space focused on ecofeminism, migration, and care. A large woven tapestry adorned with floating nymphs marks the entrance to the installation, while glass birds resting in pools of oil and a narrative centered on the iconic Grandmother figure interlace personal memories with global crises.
Prouvost’s work balances humor, vulnerability, and critical reflection.
Pamela Rosenkranz – between instinct and artificiality
Pamela Rosenkranz (b. 1979, Switzerland) works at the intersection of biology, technology, and commercial systems. In She Has No Mouth, visitors are enveloped in blue LED light that alters the appearance of skin and the atmosphere of the space, while a synthetic scent – based on a feline pheromone – activates the body’s instictive sensory apparatus. The scent is used in the perfume industry to stimulate desire.
Rosenkranz examines how human perception is influenced by both evolutionary impulses and culturally constructed signals.
Part of ARoS’ exhibition triology Making New Worlds
Step Inside is the second part of ARoS’ triology Making New Worlds, which explores art’s ability to create new ways of experiencing and perceiving the world. The first part, The Cosmos Within (2024), explored the inner human universe. With Step Inside, the focus shifts to the sensory and spatial encounter with the external world.
Publication
ARoS will publish a richly illustrated catalogue featuring a peer-reviewed research article, a text by sociologist Nikolaj Schultz, known for his collaboration with Bruno Latour and his book Land Sickness (2023), and more.
Practical information
Step Inside is on view from February 7 to August 9, 2026 at ARoS.
The exhibition is made possible through generous support from the Obel Family Foundation, the New Carlsberg Foundation, and the Stibo Foundation.
For further information about the exhibition and the press view on February 5, please contact ARoS Press:
ARoS Press and Communications
presse@aros.dk
+45 61904942